Language universals and variation

293 Pages·2002·15.785 MB·

by  Mengistu Amberber, Peter Collins

Language
Universals and
Variation
Recent Titles
in Perspectives on Cognitive Science
Perspectives on Cognitive Science, Volume 1: Theories, Experiments, and
Foundations
Peter Slezak, Terry Caelli, and Richard Clark
Perspectives on Cognitive Science, Volume 2: Theories, Experiments, and
Foundations
Janet Wiles and Terry Dartnall, editors
Creativity, Cognition and Knowledge: An Interaction
Terry Dartnall, editor
Language Universals
and Variation
Edited by Mengistu Amberber and
Peter Collins

Perspectives on Cognitive Science
Peter Slezak, Series Editor
PPAEGER Westport, Connecticut
London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Language universals and variation / edited by Mengistu Amberber and Peter
Collins.
p. cm—(Perspectives on cognitive science)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-275-97682-3 (alk. paper)—ISBN 0-275-97683-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Language and languages—Variation. 2. Typology (Linguistics)
3. Grammar, Comparative and general. I. Amberber, Mengistu, 1961-
II. Collins, Peter
P120.V37 L348 2002
471'.2—dc21 2001058032
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.
Copyright © 2002 by Mengistu Amberber and Peter Collins
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without the
express written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001058032
ISBN: 0-275-97682-3
0-275-97683-1 (pbk.)
First published in 2002
Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
www.praeger.com

Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this book complies with the
Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984).
10 9 8 765 43 2 1
Contents
Preface ix
11 Quirky Alternations of Transitivity: The Case of
Ingestive Predicates 1
Mengistu Amberber
Ingestives in a Cross-Linguistic Perspective 4
Ingestives and Ambitransitivity 10
Ingestives as Three-Place Predicates 12
2 Explaining Clitic Variation in Spanish 21
Jose Camacho and Liliana Sanchez
Overview of the Third Person Clitic Paradigm in Spanish 22
Overview of the Etymological and the Referential Dialects 22
Accounting for the Etymological Dialect and Referential
A Dialects 25
Contact Dialects 28
3
33 Slavic Passives, Bantu Passives, and Human Cognition 41

Peter F. Kipka
A Framework 42
Slavic 45
Bantu 49
Small Clauses 54
Prototypicality 56
4 The Split VP Hypothesis: Evidence from Language
Acquisition 61
Mas a to s hi Koizumi
VI Contents
The Split VP Hypothesis 63
Preverbal Objects 67
A Split VP Account 71
Further Prediction 74
Clausal Architecture 75
5 Syntactic Constraints in a "Free Word Order" Language 83
Mary Laughren
Composition of Warlpiri AUX 86
Syntactic Constraints on the Position of AUX 92
Negative AUX 112
A Comparative Overview 117
6 On the Range and Variety of Cases Assigned by Adpositions 131
Alan R. Libert
Type I—Languages with One (Main) Adpositional Case 132
Type II—Languages with More Than One Adpositional Case 143
Toward a Minimalist Account of Adpositional Case 150
7 Optimality and Three Western Austronesian Case Systems 155
Anna Maclachlan
Background: Case System Typology, Optimality and
Austronesian 156
Three Western Austronesian Case Systems in OT 160
8 Affixes, Clitics, and Bantu Morphosyntax 185
Sam Mchombo
Morpholexical versus Morphosyntactic Processes 186
Verbal Suffixation 188
Verbal Preflxation 192
Affixes versus Clitics 193
Clitics and Inflectional Morphology 194
On the Architecture of Universal Grammar 197
Acquired Language Deficit 199
Language Change 201
Language Acquisition 202
Parsing Strategies for Bantu 204
9 Two Types of Wi-In-Situ 211
Masanori Nakamura
Lexical Properties 213
Syntactic Properties 215
Toward a Nonunitary Account 219
Null Operator Movement as Feature Movement 225
10 Vowel Place Contrasts 239
Keren Rice
Contents vn
Evidence for Peripheral 241
The Phonetic Realization of Peripheral Vowels 260
Conclusions and Consequences 263
Author Index 271
Index of Languages and Language Families 273
Subject Index 275
About the Editors and Contributors 279
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Preface
In mid-1999, Peter Slezak, the Series Editor of Perspectives on Cognitive
Science, invited us to edit a linguistics volume addressing current issues
and problems in the analysis of cross-linguistic data.
We invited colleagues from Australia and overseas whose areas of
expertise include phonology, lexical semantics, and morphosyntax to
contribute a paper on the broad theme of formal approaches to language
universals and variation.
Most of the chapters in this volume investigate aspects of natural
language variation from a formal theoretical perspective, including the
Principles and Parameters/Minimalist Program, Lexical Functional
Grammar, and Optimality Theory. It is assumed that the reader will have
at least some basic familiarity with these frameworks.
We thank all the authors for contributing to this volume. We would
also like to thank David Adger, Heidi Harley, Larry Hyman, Geraldine
Legendre, Andrew Radford, Peter Sells, Roumyana Slabakova, Margaret
Speas, and Lindsay Whaley for their invaluable advice as reviewers.

Thanks are also due to Peter Slezak for his encouragement, Debbie
Carvalko, our acquisitions editor at Greenwood Publishing Group, for
her professional help, and Marc Peake for his diligent assistance in
preparing the volume for publication.